LONDON.- Mazzoleni returns to Frieze Masters Seoul with a project presenting a selection of works by three major post-war and contemporary Italian artists who share an innovative approach to painting and sculpture.

The subtle ongoing legacy between these artists and their approach to key concepts such as form, colour and matter is emphasised by placing them in dialogue, the former representing the post-war Italian artistic style, the latter, a new kind of art that continues to be relevant in the 21st century.

“From among the many aspects of today’s artistic scene we see the multiplication of the examples of a tendency towards creating forms of ‘object-painting’: in other words, of a painting that ...embodies or already intentionally has as its aim the task of first of all representing ‘itself’ and not something extrinsic.” - Gillo Dorfles on Agostino Bonalumi, 1965

Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013) was greatly influenced by one of the most influential Italian artists of the mid-20th century, Lucio Fontana (1899-1968). Fontana’s spatial research inspired Bonalumi's monochromatic shaped canvases and the investigation of time, space and structural rhythm. His work Nero, 1970 is an example of the artist's decisive research linked to the overcoming of the subjectivity and self-referentiality of informal art: in search of the 'form' that would be able to translate a new dimension of space, bending the material boundaries of the artwork.

Mazzoleni represents the estate of Bonalumi and will be showcasing a major retrospective of the artist in the Turin gallery in November 2023, on the tenth anniversary of the artist's death.

“I have literally been conquered by painting: it is something that opens spaces for me, it opens my knowledge, my mind.” - Salvo, quoted by Luigi Meneghelli, 2003

Salvo (1947-2015) was an emblematic figure of the Italian conceptual art scene. He experimented with existential questions such as the influence of consciousness and personal experience on the perception of objects. Since the 1970s, the artist has constructed an impressive repertoire of streets, houses, trees, minarets, mosques, ruins and nocturnes, which have no reference to reality but are presented on the stage of the imaginary, as in the dream-like landscape of Una sera, 2001.

“I wouldn’t refer to surface in my work, I would instead speak of altered reality...My ‘leads’, for example, actively react to light, aiming towards the mutation into an unsuspecting matter.” - Nunzio in The Shock of Objectivity, Mazzoleni London 2009

Nunzio (born 1954) is playing a decisive role in the configuration of a different vision of sculpture, structured around his personal conception and exploring the language of form and its interrelationship with space. From the beginning of his career, he pushed the boundaries of appearance, resulting in magnificent architectural works that interweave substance, body and void in a stunning balance of rhythm. Throughout his artistic research, Nunzio develops a dialogical and personal relationship with culture and history, praising a subtle and filtered approach to the past.

In Mercurio, 1990, Nunzio tests the physicality of the material, modifying and reversing its perception by shifting its contingency.

Until 17 September, Mazzoleni London will be presenting the exhibition Nunzio. Drawings, a selection of new and unseen works on paper by the artist.